The Biz

An emerging baby bump caused a fashion crisis that started a style revolution! Enter the Bellaband from Ingrid & Isabel, an essential garment to hold up unbuttoned waistbands, loose maternity wear, and garments that slip down around a late-pregnancy belly. Customers who buy a Bellaband can spend less time thinking about their pants and proudly flaunt their bellies wearing this innovative garment. Ingrid & Isabel also offers other essentials for moms-in-waiting, many of which are just as fashionable after the stork makes his delivery.

Sometimes well-known trademarks are so familiar to us that they become synonymous with the products themselves. Brand names like Band-Aid, Kleenex, Spandex, Xerox and many more have entered our vocabulary, so much so that we use them to describe generic products other than the originals. When was the last time you asked for a facial tissue? While it’s not illegal for consumers to do this in everyday speech, it can be a big problem for companies who use a well-known trademark, perhaps without realizing that it is a registered trademark, to describe their own products. I think the most commonly misused trademark in the children’s apparel industry is ONESIES^®.

For any parent who has exclaimed, “How does so much come out when so little goes in?” there’s a way to make diapering slightly more cheerful. While it won’t make baby poo smell like roses, flowers can still be part of this dirty job with handmade baby wipe containers from Made by Angie. Angie created her company when she found she was bored with staring at the same old wipe container every day. Craving color and funky fabrics, she began to experiment with making these diapering accessories a little more fun!

What do turtles and humans have in common? Why don’t jumping spiders need to look over their shoulders? Can squirrels really fly? These intriguing questions and many more are explored in Curious Critters, a picture book for kids by photographer David FitzSimmons. The book, published by Wild Iris Publishing, contains stunning images of animals that many never see, including the red flat bark beetle and the Eastern spiny soft-shell turtle. Each photograph is accompanied by information, told from the critter’s perspective, to educate and entertain young readers.